1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relaes to golf shoes and more particularly to soles for such shoes.
2. Description of Background and Relevant Materials
Golfing requires walking and body movements which are specific to the sport for hitting the golf ball with the club. These movements necessitate the proper setting of the feet of the golfer on the ground. The shoes utilized are relatively rigid, and are almost always of relatively simple design, and the support and the stability on the ground are generally assured by means of simple spikes which are embedded in the soles. This solution, by virtue of the nature of the specific positions and movements of the body and of the feet, is far from giving complete satisfaction.
Various attempts have been made to improve this situation which at present leave something to be desired. These attempts have been based upon an analysis of the positions and movements of the body and the feet which are necessary for good efficacy.
Thus, for better anchorage of the golfer's feet during the swing, when not walking, it has been proposed such as in U.S. Pat. No. 2,095,095, to provide removable spikes of which one portion can extend towards the front and on the exterior edge of the shoe to assure a better stability on the ground. Besides the fact that this solution is not very practical, it does not take into account the dynamic aspect of the transfer of weight from one foot to the other, and furthermore disturbs rotational relative movements of the feet during and after the address phase, the backswing phase, the downswing, hitting the ball, and the follow-through.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,195,891 proposes a configured removable corner for raising the exterior edge of the shoe (right for a right-handed golfer and vice versa for a left-handed golfer) and is interposed between the ground and the sole. The corner is secured to the sole by means of an elastic strap. Even if this solution, which is hardly more practical than the preceding one, can possibly improve the stability of the golfer's haunches during the address phase and facilitate the maintenance of a proper orientation of his body during the backswing phase and can even as is said, favor the efficacy of the downswing phase, it still does not take into account the movements involved in the subsequent phases. Yet, it is the subsequent phases which are of enormous significance for the efficacy of the hit and for these determinative phases, it is more the left foot (for a right handed golfer) which must preferably be raised on its exterior edge than the right as in this patent.
The insufficiency of the proposed embodiment of this patent appears to be noted by U.S. Pat. No. 2,847,769. However, this patent is interested only in a static position, i.e., the address position. In this position, the force lines of the weight of the golfer must preferably pass through the heels, the knees being flexed towards one another. Thus, symmetrical shoes have been proposed, to constrain the golfer to adopt a proper starting position, with configured soles whose thickness on the exterior edge is greater than that on the interior edge, this thickness decreasing from the front at the metatarsal support towards the heels to force the weight of the body to maintain itself thereon. As has previously been noted, this involves optimizing a static starting position without truly taking into account the following dynamic phases: backswing, downswing, impact and follow-through, which thus renders this solution more academic in character than realistic.
A more valuable contribution appears to have been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,829 which attempts to account both for the comfort during walking of the golfer and the comfort during shooting. The soles of the shoes which have cutouts on the interior edge for the left foot and on the exterior edge for the right foot (for a right handed golfer) would not give a normal foot setting or even a supportable position during walking, over a distance on the order of a 7-8 kilometers which would result in the rapid and exaggerated fatigue of the user. However, the configurations utilized appear to add a support surface which is both stable and flexible to follow without impeding the displacements of the body of the golfer for directing the ball along the distance and orientation desired. During this movement which affects the impact and follow-through phases, the body undergoes the affect of the centrifugal force of the club and starts a displacement in the projection direction of the ball, the left knee (for a right handed golfer) displacing slightly towards the exterior and the left foot, thus pivoting on the exterior edge of the sole while the weight of the body passes almost entirely onto the left leg and the right heel lifts from the ground. The shoes are adapted to take into account these movements, and comprise for the left shoe: a sole without a support for the arch of the foot whose upper surface is thus planar, and in the plantar support zone a cut out corner of the interior side, and a lowered and rounded portion on the exterior side round which the shoe will pivot. For the right shoe there is an arch of the foot support sole, and in the zone of the tip of the foot an angled configuration in the lower corner on the exterior edge and raised on the interior edge which is itself rounded are provided. These shoes are in part at least contradictory with the those of the present state of the art which have been previously described such that even if they can effectively favor the impact and follow-through phases of the ball, nothing would appear to be able to absorb and stop the final pivoting phase on the exterior edge of the left foot. On the contrary, this pivoting possibility beyond that which is useful, is amplified by the rounded profile of this edge from where equilibrium conditions which are more and more unstable for the golfer at the end of this movement occur. Furthermore, as has been explained above, the seatings with very different inclination both in the longitudinal as well as transverse direction of the feet respectively, left and right, of the golfer render these shoes rather inappropriate for the walking phase which can be very long.